Thought Leader Insights on Innovation Ecosystems and Clusters

This article provides short, “book reviews” and selected comments on recent, popular books that focused on ecosystems and clusters. They include: AnnaLee Saxenian (reflections and lessons from “Regional Advantage”; Leslie Berlin (the building of Silicon Valley from “Troublemakers”); Richard Florida (reflections and extensions of “The Creative Class”); and, Greg Horowitt (lessons from “Rainforest”).

What determines the success of economic transition? Constructing regional advantage for Eastern and Western European regions

The aim of this paper is to identify the differences in the determinants of successful transition (understood as the creation of a new development path) between the eastern and the western EU Member States between 1994 and 2014 and elaborate assumptions for a strategy of constructing regional advantage for them at the NUTS2 level. We find that the regional transition requires individual approaches to using comparative advantage at the beginning of the process and then competing with specific advantages that can be consciously constructed throughout the process. Therefore, we hypothesise that a successful transition requires constructing regional advantages based on the knowledge-related factors, leading to specialisation in the knowledge-intensive industries. Furthermore, we state that the way of constructing such advantages differs across the regions. All of our hypotheses were confirmed. Both groups of regions had different comparative advantages at the beginning of the period and constructed competitive advantage based on related knowledge-intensive industries, leading to their specialisation. Interestingly, although the process of building regional advantage was similar, the factors used to create it were different, had a different impact on GDP growth and led to a different specialisation.

Assessing Regional Advantage Based on Smart Specialisation Strategies

Making smart regions smarter through smart specialization strategies (RIS3) is today on the political and economic agenda. In this context, it becomes a priority to know the regional stakeholders' perception of RIS3, based on the prioritization of the use of resources and capacities in their territories. The aim of this study is to perform a bibliometric analysis with the keywords smart specialization, regional innovation systems, and value, rareness, imitability, and organization (VRIO). The authors aim to contribute to the clarification of the literature on regional innovation ecosystems. They also intend to suggest a new model that allows the VRIO model to be adapted to the territories. Through extensive research using the Web of Science database, five clusters were identified (multiple helix; smart specialization and RIS3; innovation and entrepreneurship; regional policies and knowledge transfer and technology commercialization; regional growth, entrepreneurial, and innovative ecosystem), whose content analysis allowed to construct the conceptual regional helix assessment model.

Building and Operating a System to Promote Regional Competitive Industries Through Cross-Sectoral Collaborations

Initiated by regional governments, economic associations, etc., many regions are trying to promote competitive industries through cross-sectoral collaboration. The purpose of this study is to consider management approaches to build and operate a regional system for facilitating a self-organizing process of cross-sectoral collaborations. First, related literatures are reviewed. Then, the concept of constructing regional advantage is introduced. Then, a platform policy through building a Regional Innovation System based on the Triple-Helix model is examined. In the case study, the experiences of three states in Germany are examined by focusing on the medical technology industry. In these states, to promote regional industries, regional systems to facilitate cross-sectoral collaborations are structured. The main focus is how the systems were built and operated through the involvement of regional stakeholders. Last, the results of the case study are comparatively analyzed and the implications for the management are discussed.

Economic Ecosystems

In this chapter the concept of ecosystems as applied to economic geography is reviewed. It is argued that economic systems taking the metaphor of the ecosystem more literally than has been done in the past may advance understanding of economic systems at the regional scale are, literally, ecosystems. An ecosystem is defined as a dynamically stable network of interconnected firms and institutions within bounded geographical space. It is proposed that representing regional economic networks as ‘ecosystems’ provides analytical structure and depth to theories of the sources of regional advantage, the role of entrepreneurs in regional development, and the determinants of resilience in regional economic systems. The chapter frames regional economic change in terms of ecosystem dynamics, with reference to ecologically derived concepts of succession, speciation, diversity, resilience, and adaptation.